IRL: In Real Life (After Oscar, #1)(66)

He wouldn’t do that to me, I automatically thought.

Except how could I possibly be sure of that? He clearly wasn’t the man I thought he was.

Or maybe he was. Maybe he’d always been That Asshole and I’d just fallen prey to his charm offensive. Maybe I wasn’t the only one he’d even done this to. The thought of Wells seducing another man made me ill.

I pressed my fingertips against my temples, what-if scenarios spinning through my brain.

I thought back through every interaction we’d had as NotSam and Trace. Remembering Trace’s… Wells’s commanding tone with me that first night we’d texted had me squirming in my too-narrow airplane seat. All the woman next to me needed to really lose her shit was to see me with a sudden erection.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I needed to stop thinking about Wells. To stop torturing myself with what-ifs and recriminations.

Focus on Mom, I told myself. She was the person who should be getting all of this mental energy from me, not him. Never him.

But that was easier said than done. I remembered texting Trace about my mother, about how sick she was, and then…

My eyes shot open as I made the connection. And then the next morning he’d been late. He’d come in announcing an end to the negotiations because he’d agreed to our price.

I’d told him we needed the money from the deal to pay for her treatments, and he’d turned around and made sure we got it. No more haggling. No more delays.

Then he’d asked to spend the day with me. My chest squeezed at the memory. There’d been no reason for him to make such a request. The deal was done, only the technicalities left to be arranged. He could have been done with me as well. But he hadn’t been.

I struggled to come up with a business reason for him to have spent the day with me. I couldn’t.

Maybe… maybe he’d just wanted to spend time with me.

Dammit, there was something in my eye. And throat. And fucking heart.

I shook my head. No. He was not a good man. He wasn’t. He was a user. A cold-hearted bastard. And even if he thought he was having feelings for me, he’d made it very clear he didn’t do feelings. Hadn’t James even said that was a well-known thing around town?

Wells “Glacier” Grange was a fucker, not a lover. Everyone knew it.

That fucker.

I turned to look out the window. But it was hard to hold on to my self-righteous rage. Because I kept remembering the smaller moments of kindness. The way he’d cleared the conference room during my presentation when I’d accidentally flashed the wrong slide on the screen and almost fainted. The way he’d tucked my scarf into my jacket during the carriage ride. The way he’d listened and asked questions when I’d told him about my game shop. The way he’d always kept a hand on my lower back when the crowds around us threatened to separate us.

The kind of things that people did when they cared for one another.

What if…?

No, I told myself again. Men like Wells didn’t change. They didn’t. And, hell, even if they did, it wasn’t like I had any interest in leaving everything that was important to me and moving to the city. Just the thought of moving far away from my quaint town, the rugged paths of my favorite hiking woods, and my ill mother made me feel nauseous.

No, New York wasn’t a place for me. And I couldn’t imagine Wells Grange being happy anywhere else.

So, it was a nonstarter regardless of anything that may or may not have passed between us.

In real life, a relationship between the two of us would never work.





“Where is she?” I asked Bill the moment I walked through the side door of my mom’s house. “By the way, I got you something at this cool market stall in Central Park. Give me a minute to say hi to Mom and I’ll—”

I stopped talking when I noticed the look on his face. My stomach dropped, and I began to shake.

“Bill,” I croaked. “Where is she?” I took a step deeper into the house, getting ready to call out to her, when he grabbed me by the elbow.

“She’s okay. She’s at Mission,” he said, referring to the local hospital. “I told her I’d take you there as soon as you got back.”

“I could have driven straight there from the airport. Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t want you to freak out and drive like a maniac. And there’s no rush. She’s okay.”

“Obviously she’s not okay,” I barked, letting some of my emotion from the day escape. “She’s in the fucking hospital. What the hell happened?”

I could hear the panic and desperation in my voice and knew if I didn’t get myself together soon, I’d be a soppy mess on the floor in a curled-up ball. And that wouldn’t help my mother at all. I took a breath, trying to calm myself. Right now I needed to be strong for my mother. Later, when I was on my own again, I could fall apart.

“She was having trouble breathing from the pneumonia. They’re giving her some breathing treatments and IV antibiotics. She’s doing much better, but they want to keep her a few days. They’re being extra cautious because of her compromised lung function.”

As he spoke, he led me back out the door and took the keys from my hand, opening the passenger door of my own SUV and urging me in.

When we got to the hospital, he dropped me off out front with instructions on where to go once I got inside.